Integration of Google Places search API in Node JS

05 January 2021

Introduction

If you want to add place search and want to display places on Google map using NodeJS then you are at the right place.

Google provides a feature of searching places based on the latitude and longitude or we can say location. Google gives Places API Requests, NearBy Search API Requests to search place information like shops, hospitals, Grocery stores, Petrol pumps, Restaurants nearby you.

Following are the key points which are required when you search for any place:

• Radius
• Location (Latitude and Longitude)
• Place’s name / Category of place’s name like Restaurant

Type of APIs and its usage

• Place Search API 
  • To search the list of places with respect to passed location or search string. We can search places using variety of
    • categories,
    • including establishments
    • prominent points of interest
    • geographic locations
  • We can search either by geolocation and radius or search string
  • API EndPoint
    • Search by text
      • https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/place/findplacefromtext/json?parameters
    • Find nearbyplaces
      • https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/place/nearbysearch/json?parameters
    • Text Search Request
      • https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/place/textsearch/json?parameters

• Place Details API 
  • To get the details of the single place with user reviews
  • API EndPoint
    • https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/place/details/json?parameters
  • Example
    • https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/place/details/json?place_id=ChIJN1t_tDeuEmsRUsoyG83frY4&fields=name,rating,formatted_phone_number&key=YOUR_API_KEY

• Place Photos API 
  • To access the photos of the places stored in Google DB
  • API EndPoint
    • https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/place/photo?parameters
  • Example
    • https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/place/photo?maxwidth=400&photoreference=CnRtAAAATLZNl354RwP_9UKbQ_5Psy40texXePv4oAlgP4qNEkdIrkyse7rPXYGd9D_Uj1rVsQdWT4oRz4QrYAJNpFX7rzqqMlZw2h2E2y5IKMUZ7ouD_SlcHxYq1yL4KbKUv3qtWgTK0A6QbGh87GB3sscrHRIQiG2RrmU_jF4tENr9wGS_YxoUSSDrYjWmrNfeEHSGSc3FyhNLlBU&key=YOUR_API_KEY

• Place AutoComplete
  • To automatically show the suggestions based on the typed string or text
  • API EndPoint
    • https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/place/autocomplete/output?parameters

• Query AutoComplete
  • To provide the query predicted as the user typed the string or text
  • API EndPoint
    • https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/place/queryautocomplete/output?parameters

Steps to Calling APIs

First Step: Get API key for Google Places API

• Create Google Developer Account and add project
• Enable Billing Account
• Enable Places API
• Go to Google Cloud Console
• Go to the project from the projects dropdown
• Go to API and Services and then Credentials Page
• Hit the Create Credential button
• Hit the API Key button
• In pop up, you can view the API Key
• That’s it, in the API URL start passing your API Key to make it work. You can call any places API with this API Key from the Postman tool.

Clients Available

• NodeJS – https://github.com/googlemaps/google-maps-services-js
• Java – https://github.com/googlemaps/google-maps-services-java
• Python – https://github.com/googlemaps/google-maps-services-python
• Go – https://github.com/googlemaps/google-maps-services-go
• ObjectiveC – https://github.com/google/google-api-objectivec-client-for-rest
• GoogleAPI Java – https://developers.google.com/api-client-library/java/google-api-java-client/dev-guide

Conclusion

To search the places by location and search string we can use Google’s Place APIs. It has different options and APIs based on the requirement we can consume them directly by generating the API key. We can have data in both JSON and XML format. It is easy to integrate and nice to have for any requirement where we need to display places in our application.